Variety's Scores

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For 17,782 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 IMAX: Hubble 3D
Lowest review score: 0 Divorce: The Musical
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9,136 out of 17782
  2. Mixed: 7,010 out of 17782
  3. Negative: 1,636 out of 17782
17782 movie reviews
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  1. The Great Flood
    There’s a lot to look at here, and nary a dull moment. Still, the cumulative impact is less than “great” — hobbled by too many confused, confusing layers in an overstuffed second half.
  2. The Gallerist
    The intermittently clever movie is full of art-world in-jokes, but seems oblivious to its many plot holes, which are more conspicuous than the slashes in one of Lucio Fontana’s “Spatial Concept” canvases.
  3. Outcome
    A generally brittle, distant affair, Outcome largely saps Reeves of his genial, unaffected charisma, leaving him to play the carapace of a man who’s lost any real sense of who he is when not in character.
  4. Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
    While trying to confront grief with a sense of mischief, the movie’s impish tonal approach takes the sting out of death a little too often, rendering its catharsis null. It’s hard not to respect a big swing, but Wladyka ultimately misses.
  5. Tow
    Tow is a minor indie that doesn’t always make the right moves, but Byrne seizes her character and turns the question of whether you like her or not into the film’s dramatic motor.
  6. Touch Me
    In trying to do too much, the filmmakers end up with much less than they could have.
  7. Roommates
    By turns tenderly observed, improbably dark and perkily sitcom-esque, it’s certainly erratic, and uncertainly much else.
  8. Balls Up
    A mostly pretty innocuous affair — give or take some par-for-the-course ethnic stereotyping and at least one close-up involving a prosthetic glans — it’s neither good nor bad to any memorable degree, not as riotous as it could have been but not devoid of low-hanging laughs either.
  9. Deep Water
    Deep Water isn’t terrible for what it is, but what it is is disaster product.
  10. Moulin
    It’s a gorgeous-looking film, but one that doesn’t go anywhere anytime soon, given the linearity and literal nature of its approach to human anguish. At over two hours in length, its points are made with clarity before being repeated ad nauseam.
  11. Sheep in the Box
    Kore-eda’s attitude toward what he’s showing us is so lackluster and noncommittal that it’s hard to know how to react to any of it.
  12. The Wolfman
    The constant repetition of these shock tactics, in lieu of genuine suspense, makes The Wolfman feel cheap, despite the vast amounts obviously spent on Rick Heinrichs' opulent production design, the extensive visual effects, the more-than-effective special makeup effects, Milena Canonero's luxurious costumes, Danny Elfman's insistent score and the tony cast.
  13. The Lovely Bones
    Jackson undermines solid work from a good cast with show-offy celestial evocations that severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters.
  14. The Road
    Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front.
  15. It's Complicated
    Cute and clever though the plot may be, everything is played out in the broadest possible terms without an iota of nuance or subtlety.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Spy Next Door
    Chan struggles gamely to charm, but the picture's cartoonish jokes and misfired gags are likely to elicit more eye rolls than laughs.
  17. Leap Year
    Pleasant enough overall, if also somewhat gratingly old-fashioned.
  18. Ninja Assassin
    Seemingly made to capitalize on a dubious CG innovation -- namely, the slicing of bodies in half by whizzing five-pointed stars -- Ninja Assassin has little else to recommend it, not even laughs.
  19. 44 Inch Chest
    On the debit side, and it's a doozy, the picture's narrative trajectory fails to deliver a third act that takes the story anywhere of note except into a silly realm of cut-rate surrealism. Final reel ends not with the expected bang but with an almost inaudible whimper.
  20. Gamer
    The audience gets played in Gamer. This latest eye-scraper from writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor is as hopped up as their "Crank" pics, but with dour Gerard Butler as a soldier commandeered by a teenage gamer, it's considerably less interactive.
  21. Planet 51
    There's nothing funny, provocative or involving about what "Shrek" co-writer Joe Stillman and the team from Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studios do with the notion here.
  22. New York, I Love You
    The results are, well, formulaic, hobbled by weak dialogue and absent any sense of texture.
  23. Couples Retreat
    Those involved got to spend weeks at a Bora Bora luxury resort; all we get is this not lousy but unmemorable tropical-vacation comedy.
  24. Cop Out
    There's precious little of that tension to be found between co-leads Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, but more than enough between director Kevin Smith and the shoddy script he's elected to take on, and neither seems willing to budge.
  25. The Fourth Kind
    Even the most gullible auds will be challenged to buy into the picture, billed as "based on the actual case studies" and, in any case, rendered rather boring by writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi ("The Cavern").
  26. The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond
    The fragrant aroma of magnolias is undercut by the distinct smell of mothballs throughoutThe Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, an admirably earnest but curiously flat attempt to film a long-unproduced scenario by Tennessee Williams.
  27. Extract
    The picture's attempts at comic portraiture feel sketchy at best, more or less assigning each character a single, belabored trait.
  28. I Hate Valentine's Day
    A plodding mediocrity with an almost mercenary adherence to formula.
  29. Jennifer's Body
    This high school horror romp tackles its bad-girl-gone-really-bad premise with eye-rolling obviousness and, fatally, a near-total absence of real scares.
  30. Orphan
    Teasingly enjoyable rubbish through the first hour, Orphan becomes genuine trash during its protracted second half.
  31. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    The Vampire's Assistant is too busy making impossible claims about just how spectacular its sequels will be to serve up a self-contained story with a satisfying finale.
  32. AVP: Alien vs. Predator
    The thing-a-ma-jigs have it out with the whatch-a-ma-call-its -- as several humans scurry and scream between -- in Alien Vs. Predator, the kind of two-for-one dogfight (last repped by "Freddy Vs. Jason") that usually does more to bury a franchise than revive it.
  33. Saw VI
    A film so frighteningly familiar it could well be called "Saw It Already."
  34. The Limits of Control
    Worst of all, it just feels tired and recycled.
  35. Babylon A.D.
    A noisier, costlier version of "Children of Men," yet lacking that film's social-political significance and jaw-dropping direction.
  36. P.S. I Love You
    "Ghost" with a brogue, "The Notebook" without the burden of old people, this post-life comedy will have the sentimentally challenged weeping openly, while clutching desperately to the pants-legs of boyfriends and husbands who are trying to flee up the aisle.
  37. Mindhunters
    Ridiculous would-be thriller.
  38. White Noise
    An unsatisfying supernatural thriller with an effectively unsettling build-up and a frustratingly muddled pay-off.
  39. Are We There Yet?
    Are We There Yet? traps the affable Ice Cube in a dismal kiddy slapstick saga that even his considerable charisma can do little to enhance.
  40. Hide and Seek
    A routine haunted child psychothriller gussied up with A-list casting.
  41. The Wedding Date
    An intriguingly racy premise -- plays out to listless, unsatisfying effect.
  42. Cursed
    Except for Eisenberg's superb comic timing and his ability to make the familiar seem interesting, the high school scenes play like "Scream" outtakes.
  43. The Jacket
    A movie as lacking in personality as its amnesiac protagonist.
  44. The Pacifier
    If auds swallow this odoriferous exercise in calculated career repositioning, they'll swallow anything.
  45. In My Country
    An unquestionably sincere but dramatically stillborn outing by veteran John Boorman.
  46. Mail Order Wife
    This black comedy on the making of a documentary about mail-order wives finally breaks down under the weight of its twists and turns, but mostly maintains a creepy fascination with its scuzzy characters.
  47. Dot the I
    But behind its slick veneer and the glibness of its preposterous premise and dark twists, there's a yawning absence of charm or substance in this London-set love triangle, as well as a lack of chemistry between its three leads.
  48. Guess Who
    If only as much thought went into the script for this listless comedy as its marketing calculus.
  49. Girl Play
    The live event was hopefully more engaging than this dull adaptation.
  50. Eating Out
    Rude, heavily contrived, pretty funny, just remotely connected to real-world youth life.
  51. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    Repetitive and needlessly prolonged tale does build to an inspired final scene, but it's too little, too late.
  52. 15: The Movie
    15 is Asian Kid Rebels 101. So predictable it could almost be a parody of the genre -- though that would require a sense of humor above and beyond the self-reflexive comedy on display here.
  53. The Game of Their Lives
    Picturesque pic, however, lacks even a penalty kick's worth of tension and is paradoxically inert for a movie about guys running up and down the pitch for the glory of the U.S.
  54. The Man Who Copied
    Intermittently amusing.
  55. Jiminy Glick in Lalawood
    Too often depends on salty, adolescent one-liners that provide shock value guffaws but grow cumulatively wearisome.
  56. 2009: Lost Memories
    More often a noirish action drama, a melancholy meditation on history and nationalism, than the high-tech thriller promised by its hype and artwork.
  57. The Bridge of San Luis Rey
    The stellar cast can do little to paper over the cracks in an awkward, unevenly-paced script that is composed of a series of sometimes-attractive scenes with little emotional undertow.
  58. The Perfect Man
    For most part, The Perfect Man is too bland to merit anything more censorious than a stifled yawn.
  59. Ethan Mao
    Messy admixtures of drama and mockery crucially undermine pic's serious message.
  60. Bewitched
    Nora Ephron's attempt to reconceive the standard TV-to-bigscreen adaptation goes bizarrely haywire here, spinning out of control like a runaway broomstick.
  61. Yes
    Ultimately has nothing of any real depth or profundity to say, but a thousand self-consciously complex ways of saying it.
  62. This Revolution
    The street action is vivid, but the dramatics are distinctly not, lending the film an unintended sense of fakery.
  63. The Warrior
    Tendency to go for art rather than action, and a leisurely pace that isn't bolstered by much dialogue or food for thought.
  64. Stealth
    Aiming to join the Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay school of American movie war games, Stealth is just too dumb to make the grade.
  65. The Great Raid
    This overlong march will bore all but the most nobly patriotic.
  66. Pretty Persuasion
    An exercise in bad taste that takes itself just seriously enough to be offensive.
  67. Valiant
    Fails to get off the ground due to a by-numbers script and dodo-ugly character design.
  68. Clean
    Dramatically pallid and unconvincing. Despite being written for her, the director's "Irma Vep" muse Maggie Cheung seems oddly miscast here and is ill-served by an emotionally underpowered screenplay that rarely gets beneath the surface of the character's problems.
  69. The Cave
    Refreshing strokes of science-fact in the early sections give way to action strictly from the Ridley Scott-James Cameron playbook, but without a powerful helmer behind the camera or a memorable cast in front.
  70. Undiscovered
    As a cautionary drama on the price of fame, Undiscovered could not tread on more exhaustively discovered territory, and the result is a reel-by-reel trail of cliches.
  71. William Eggleston in the Real World
    Despite Almereyda's strong following in arthouse circles, William Eggleston in the Real World --which requires patient if not repeat viewing -- will probably not venture far into it.
  72. Margaret Cho: Assassin
    Inspiration is running thin in comedian Margaret Cho's fourth concert film, a routine stand-up set that compares poorly to her oft-hilarious first two.
  73. Steal Me
    A classic case of overreaching, Steal Me boasts unorthodox camera angles, dramatic shifts in its palette and a generally adventurous visual style. What it lacks is believable dialogue, credible relationships and a serious foundation for its overripe psychology.
  74. Daltry Calhoun
    A string of scenes in search of a movie.
  75. Into the Blue
    Not a thriller so much as an extremely violent swimsuit calendar, the lushly lensed but dramatically waterlogged Into the Blue is too infatuated with its scantily clad stars to make sense of all the drug dealers, boat looters and bloodthirsty sharks trying to hunt them down.
  76. Carlito's Way: Rise to Power
    Conspicuously underwhelming.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Going Shopping
    Item may draw curious women looking to cool their heels, say, while out shopping, but straight men can be expected to stay away in droves and Jaglom regulars will probably wait for the DVD.
  78. MirrorMask
    Emerges as an overproduced novelty pic that looks and feels more like a company promo reel than an engaging piece of storytelling.
  79. The War Within
    An honorable but failed attempt to dramatize the dynamics that propel a basically good man to become a suicide bomber, The War Within contains provocative points inside a dull package.
  80. Sueño
    Brimming with fanciful ideas about life, romance and the rejuvenating power of music, Sueno sings a lovely tune but chokes on its own banal lyrics.
  81. Waiting...
    The wait for laughs lasts the entire length of Waiting ..., first feature from writer-director Rob McKittrick that aims to be a "Clerks"-type comedy set in a chain restaurant but ends up somewhere below a "Porky's" sequel.
  82. Never Been Thawed
    Comes off as lame and unfocused as its draggy dramatis personae.
  83. Domino
    Satisfying neither as character study nor as straight-ahead actioner.
  84. The Fog
    Unfortunately, interest lags between the grisly deaths, and, worse, none of the characters generates rooting interest.
  85. Stay
    An ultra-arty "The Sixth Sense" that deliberately inhibits comprehension of the story until the very end -- and arguably continues to inhibit it even then -- pic features certifiably talented people on both sides of the camera collaborating on a project that probably shouldn't have been undertaken in the first place.
  86. Kids in America
    Josh Stolberg launches a scalding attack on the stodgy conservatism of the American public school system, only to end up stacking the deck in egregiously smirky and simple-minded ways.
  87. Derailed
    This murky psychological suspenser manages the tricky feat of being as predictable as it is finally preposterous.
  88. Ellie Parker
    Without Watts, Scott Coffey's feature-length expansion of his identically titled short wouldn't amount to much.
  89. La sierra
    Result is a loose personal piece of reportage that places people over ideas and larger issues, and reveals the pic's severe limitations long before a surprisingly upbeat ending.
  90. Æon Flux
    The future looks alternately grim and hysterical in Aeon Flux, a spectacularly silly sci-fier that plays like "The Matrix" crossed with "The Island" and reinterpreted as a long-lost Michael Jackson video.
  91. First Descent
    Pic displays filmmakers Kevin Harrison's and Kemp Curley's love of snowboarding, but suffers from an unjustifiably long running time, considerable repetition and a generally awkward structure.
  92. Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    Bland, canned but studiously professional sequel retains most of the principals from Fox's family-friendly 2003 hit, including the ever-reliable Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt.
  93. The Big White
    Snowed under by misjudgment on every level, The Big White is DOA. Despite a cast that generally reads like an indie production's wish list, pic's tendency to liberally borrow from the Coen Brothers playbook of comic mayhem is exceeded only by its lack of sense of what's actually funny.
  94. Grandma's Boy
    Even Sandler diehards may pass on this mostly derivative paean to compulsive computer geekdom and male sexual dysfunction.
  95. Last Holiday
    Most successful when it is engaging, not uproarious. Glossy amusement is an updated remake of a well-regarded 1950 Brit comedy-drama starring Alec Guinness, improbably retrofitted as a star vehicle for Queen Latifah.
  96. April's Shower
    The joys of farce are fumbled in April's Shower, star-director-writer Trish Doolan's arch and undernourished comedy about a bridal shower turned on its head by the bride's lesbian past.
  97. Manderlay
    The subject being race relations, Manderlay is bound to stir considerable debate in intellectual circles, but given the director's abstract style and use of characters to enact an agenda, it's a discussion that will exclude the general public, who will ignore it as they did "Dogville."
  98. Winter Passing
    Family drama appears content to present the situation without going for anything remotely close to the emotional jugular. Result is unsatisfying and even dreary, despite some fine work from Zooey Deschanel and a becalmed Will Ferrell.
  99. Sorry, Haters
    Penn looks bewildered in a role that simply doesn't track, but Kechiche rises to the occasion. Stanzler's helming, shot blandly in digital vid, amounts to point-and-shoot.
  100. The Shaggy Dog
    This fur-fetched tale is bearable family viewing.
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